Canopy walkways are gradual being seen in most of Ghana’s tourism sites and one man is responsible for placing the infrastructure in these tourists’ locations.
According to yen.com.gh, for lovers of tourism, some of the most popular places to visit in Ghana are the Kakum National Park, Legon Botanical Gardens, and the Kintampo Waterfalls.
While the Kakum Park and Legon Gardens are already famed for their canopy walkways, the Kintampo Falls has had a canopy walkway added to the experience after its reopening.
Though patrons love and enjoy their time on the canopy walkways, not many people had the idea of how those walkways were built or who built them.
Well, it has emerged that the walkways and many others across Ghana are the handiwork of a man from Akyem Maase in the Eastern region called Kenneth Akufo Asare.
In an interview with Kofi Adomah on Kofi TV, Asare has narrated how he came to be the builder of those famed canopy walkways.
How Akufo Asare learned to build canopy walkways According to him, the PNDC’s Central Regional Secretary, Ato Austin, visited Malaysia and saw a canopy walkway. After showing interest, he was directed to the Canadians and he brought them down to build the walkway as construction started in September 1994 and ended in 1995.
The Canadians were very old at the time and needed a Ghanaian who could help maintain the walkway when they were done with manufacturing.
At the time, Kenneth Asare was a parrot trapper at the wildlife division and was seconded to assist the Canadians who taught him a safer way of climbing trees.
From his association with the Canadians, he learned how to build the walkways and he has since built and maintained many such canopy walkways across Ghana and beyond.
Projects in other parts of Ghana and Africa Apart from building walkways at Legon, Kakum, Kintampo, and other parts of Ghana, Kenneth Asare’s expertise has seen him do similar works in Kwara state in Nigeria.
He also built a walkway on the sea at Ave Maria Resort, a popular tourist site in Tema which was pulled down in 2018 to give way to the Tema Harbour expansion project.
Asare also worked on what he described as the longest walkway in West Africa, the Penninsula Walkway. Located at Akosombo, it was completed in December 2019.
Interestingly, Asare who has sixteen children claims all his children, especially, the 11 males among them, have been taught how to build the walkways.
